Trump's bizarre cult of personality

Evan Vucci / AP

Vice President Mike Pence, left, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus watch as President Donald Trump shows off an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact agreed to under the Obama administration, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.

Vice President Mike Pence, left, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus watch as President Donald Trump shows off an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact agreed to under the Obama administration, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.

President Donald Trump made news by making some blatantly untrue statements when he spoke at the CIA. But he wasn’t even the biggest source of falsehood at that event. The latter distinction went to Mike Pence, who introduced his boss by informing the audience that he had never met anyone “who is a greater strategic thinker” on matters of national security.

This goes beyond the normal embellishment of achievement into downright fantasy. The world is a complicated place, and Trump’s ideas about defense and foreign policy are crude and primitive. But Pence gets extra points for stating something that is obviously the exact opposite of the truth. It’s the sort of flattery you expect in North Korea.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus followed suit on Sunday morning with praise so fawning it could make your teeth ache. “I’ve never seen anyone work harder or have more energy than this president,” he marveled, omitting that Trump was treating Monday, the normal start of the work week, as his first day in office, rather than expend too much of his limitless energy on a weekend.

Also unmentioned is that the new president is too lazy to submit to daily intelligence briefings. His former ghostwriter Tony Schwartz has said, “I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.” Too much work, maybe?

The Trump team is intent on creating a cult of personality celebrating qualities he doesn’t possess. It was comical to see the photo Trump tweeted last week purporting to show him personally writing his inaugural address — at what turned out to be the concierge desk in a public area of his Mar-a-Lago resort. It exposed egomania on the scale exhibited by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong. In 1966, the people of China were shown photos of Mao swimming in the Yangtze River, where he was reported to have swum 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) in 65 minutes, a world-record pace.

Trump’s problem is that in a country that protects free expression, the ludicrous portrait created by him and his acolytes is easily debunked. But they’re betting that a lot of people are gullible enough to believe it.